National Hockey League bounces into violent action with new campaign from Heat

One of the interesting things about globalisation has been that Americans have had to acknowledge that their own parochial sports aren’t quite as significant as they thought they were. The Word Series for baseball? Nobody else plays it professionally, it’s called rounders or softball.

Football, or soccer as they insist on calling it, is far more important as a global game than American football, or NFL football, as the rest of the world knows it.

But you have to like ice hockey, which is also played in other cold countries. It’s more or less unregulated mayhem and all the better for it.

Here’s the launch ad for the new EA NHL season from Heat, directed by Josh Taft for Supply & Demand Integrated (funny name for a production company) with editing by Arcade.

It kind of implies that it’s free range violence under a sporting banner. Hardly beach volleyball.

Here’s a clip from the old Paul Newman movie Slap Shot which kinda sums up the game.